'This was all planned': Former IG says Hillary, State Dept. are lying … The State Department is lying when it says it didn't know until it was too late that Hillary Clinton was improperly using personal e-mails and a private server to conduct official business — because it never set up an agency e-mail address for her in the first place, the department's former top watchdog says. "This was all planned in advance" to skirt rules governing federal records management, said Howard J. Krongard, who served as the agency's inspector general from 2005 to 2008. – The New York Post

Dominant Social Theme: This is a shocking state of affairs.

Free-Market Analysis: The swirling e-mail crisis enveloping Hillary Clinton and her campaign takes another turn with this accusation by Howard Krongard.

Another is that President Barack Obama sent e-mails to Hillary using her private e-mail address supported by her secret server.

These are significant stories of public corruption but significant as they are, there are even larger implications that we will discuss toward the end of this article.

First some background …

The news about Obama's emails has been brought to light because the State Department announced it would not release some 20 e-mails due to their beyond-top-secret classifications – and these included Obama's correspondence.

The Krongard story is perhaps even more important because it raises Hillary's transgressions to an institutional level. The implication is that strategy must have been approved at the highest levels of the State Department and then beyond.

Krongard's logic begins with the observation that Hillary never received a state.gov e-mail, which is a significant change in the "standard" used by the State Department. Thus the State Department must have been aware of the omission. Standards are not changed in a vacuum.

Additionally, Krongard points out the "unusual" absence of a permanent inspector general that ran from 2009-2013, Clinton's term. The article terms the vacancy "unprecedented."

"It's clear she did not want to be subject to internal investigations," Krongard said. An e-mail audit would have easily uncovered the secret information …

Krongard also points out that many of the most classified e-mails on Hillary's personal server came from a State Department network called SIPRNet. Someone must have arranged for State Department e-mails to be funneled to Hillary's server on a regular basis.

The idea would be that Hillary's deputies at the State Department copied information from the department's classified network and then circulated them to Hillary's unsecured system.

At nearly the same time as these stories were breaking, we have familiar tidings on an entirely different front. The IRS was making news again for destroying servers that may have held incriminating information. Forbes reports the "IRS Wipes Another Hard Drive Defying Court Order…"

Talk about Déjà vu. Despite a court order to preserve documents, the IRS wiped the hard drive of an important IRS official, Mr. Samuel Maruca. Controversially, Mr. Maruca helped the IRS hire Quinn Emanuel, an outside law firm tasked with pursuing Microsoft.

Hiring outsiders at over $1,000 an hour (!) angered Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, who wrote a letter to the IRS complaining about strange deal and the $2.2 million fee. Sen. Hatch pointed out that this was work the IRS and Justice Department should do.

A federal judge was also troubled. And when the questions were too probing, oops, the hard drive was wiped. Sound familiar?

Forbes is referring to Lois Lerner, the director of the Internal Revenue Service's Exempt Organizations office, who may have supervised an illegal operation to ensure that Tea Party and conservative groups did not get tax-exempt status in a timely fashion. Some 24,000 of Ms. Lerner's e-mails were deleted by the IRS.

Despite obvious action to avoid complying with court orders, the Obama Department of Justice decided that there was not enough evidence to prosecute anyone at the IRS, not even Ms. Lerner.

And only a few days ago, President Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest made national news with the statement that the FBI's e-mail investigation was not "trending" toward Hillary and that it would ultimately be up to the Department of Justice to decide whether to prosecute her.

Of course, if Obama doesn't want Hillary prosecuted, then the DOJ will likely find there is not enough evidence to move ahead, just as it did with the IRS potential prosecution.

In a previous article, we speculated that the Obama administration did not want Hillary as the Democrat presidential candidate and was setting up a scenario in which she would retire from her campaign for health reasons.

But perhaps Obama's own involvement in e-mailgate is too deep. In that case, the entire mess may simply be swept under the proverbial rug in much the same manner as the IRS situation was dealt with.

There are larger implications, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article. Both e-mailgate and the IRS tax-exempt scandal have been enormously publicized. Huge swaths of US citizens who might not otherwise have any idea how the country's modern government works have been intimately exposed to the corruption and malfeasance not only of high officials but of the DOJ as well.

This is a 21st century circumstance almost entirely attributable to the 24-hour news cycle of the Internet and the alternative media that covers issues that the mainstream media would ordinarily avoid.

Donald Trump's emergence as the GOP frontrunner is yet another example of what's going on in the body politic, which is seemingly extraordinarily suspicious of government institutions of any kind.

The combination of increased, public malfeasance, lack of prosecutions and ever more efficient and widespread information technology is poisoning government credibility – and on a nationwide scale.

The resurgent militia movement, the Tea Party upheavals and the alternative media itself are reshaping public sentiment. These are substantive changes, not ephemeral political fashion.

Conclusion: Washington's political and military movers and shakers pursue business-as-usual, nonetheless, apparently oblivious to how things have changed. At some point they will become more fully informed, and that revelation will not be especially pleasant for anyone.

Well of course she is guilty as is the entire corrupt State Department that enabled her and then covered up for her. Even the most cognitively dissonant American should understand this. But the Rule of Law no longer exists in this country, especially for a member of the elite establishment, and thus she will walk. If so, it will cause a further, and rapidly growing antipathy towards Government which will require another false flag as an immediate distraction. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Marten

Very well said…” In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” — Martin Luther King Jr.

Bruce C.

I agree with everything but a false flag distraction, at least a successful one.

Even not knowing exactly how the dots are connected, a false flag will be interpreted by even the nearly comatose to be a symptom of incompetence and corruption again. Excuses and circumstances “outside our control”, etc. aren’t going to fly. Such an explanation wouldn’t even make sense, because if they can claim to lay blame on the proper culprit then that proves their prior negligence.

jim

I agree with DB’s analysis. Krongard’s out-loud informed explanation of all this – even with some resignation about the ultimate outcome – is a huge deal. However we get there, it’s hard not to conclude that it’s late in the day for the DC crime syndicate.

Pilgrim

There are two ways of getting money. The first is to engage in industry and commerce, the second is to plunder those who engage in industry and commerce. Every single last activity of government should be to enhance, protect, safeguard, preserve and defend those engaged in industry and commerce. When the purpose of government is re-directed to safe-guarding those who plunder, economic deterioration is the only possible outcome, and has been since 1964.

Praetor

Internet Reformation is bring this political corruption to the light of day, its always been there, just no one could see it or had the time to look at it, and see politics and government for what they are, corruption personified! Now we know, where the problems stem from. Internet Reformation is also spreading the hatred against government and the politico’s, and you be right DB, those playing with peoples lives have no idea what is coming. At the present there are so many people with free time on their hands, an old saying comes to mind, and no matter how you say it, ‘Idle hands are the devils workshop’, they are in trouble. And another thing, when Hillary is not wearing all that plastic on her face, she looks like Ms. Piggy!!!

I know it seems like Clinton is going to get away with this but my sense is she won’t, and neither will a lot of other people for their stuff.

Dolph Longedgreens

It has been obvious for some time that there are different standards of justice for government employees and private citizens.

How much longer will individuals feel compelled to abide by the rules when their betters are so obviously flaunting them?

rahrog

SECEDE

Samarami

I did. I am a sovereign state. Sam

rahrog

Well done!

Danny B

Hillary has said that if she is elected, Obummer would be a great choice for a supreme court justice. He prefers to be head of the United Nations.

But, he has more value to her in SCOTUS because he could block any investigations into her dirty dealings. We will know when we have reached “peak cheap oil” but, how will we know when we have reached “peak corruption?”

tom hewitt

The purpose of the state is to maintain the status of the state. Acts of malfeasance by its principals can be countered in a number of ways but they will always be in a way that appears to do the least damage to the state. For instance, Nixon’s resignation forestalled the political agony of an impeachment, even if that process might well have resulted in his innocence. Bill Clinton’s issues were on the other side of the aisle and less likely to have an unfortunate outcome as, in fact, he has not only survived, but prospered in the aftermath of his immoral and classless behavior, as has the state itself.

It’s likely that an evaluation of whether the best course is to throw Mrs. Bill Clinton to the wolves, or rather puppies, rather than let her slide will be made by those most affected by events in the near future. The evaluation won’t be made by the citizenry.

Samarami

“…This is a 21st century circumstance
almost entirely attributable to the 24-hour news
cycle of the Internet and the alternative media
that covers issues that the
mainstream media would ordinarily avoid…”

And from the previous paragraph:

“…Huge swaths of US citizens who might not
otherwise have any idea how the country’s modern
government works have been intimately exposed
to the corruption and malfeasance not only of
high officials but of the DOJ as well…”

I believe an increasingly prevalent plurality of individuals are coming to see even beyond this — that monopoly state IS “corruption and malfeasance”. And it IS obfuscation — exercised with genius.

It’s not that they’ve infiltrated a few bad apples among “high officials” and “the-DOJ”. It is what the beast called “state” is all about. It does not matter whether “Clinton” for the Demopublicans or “Cruz” for the Republicrats wins the caucus out in Ioway or anywhere else. Monopoly state can not manifest with any other result.